I was duct-taped to a chair in three separate places: at my ankles, my thighs, and my chest. There were two henchmen flanking me. Romeo, on my right, was a black guy in a ski mask and no shirt. His torso was larded with tattoos and tiny pockets of baby fat, as if he'd never picked up anything heavier than five pounds. To my left was a white dude named Cody, who sounded like every grown man named Cody.

In front of me was a table piled with assorted instruments of torture—a blowtorch, a drill, a stun gun—plus two glaring floodlights. Romeo had removed my blindfold temporarily so that I might have the privilege of staring directly into those floodlights. Behind the floodlights was nothing but darkness, and a voice.

"So, Drew," I heard a man say, "I think it's time that we stopped bothering to make you comfortable."

But everything turned out okay. That's because the kidnapping was fake, arranged by a company called Extreme Kidnapping, who got the idea from the 1997 David Fincher movie The Game. Pay the appropriate amount of money and they pretend to kidnap you. You can also pick your exact scenario and torture weapons. (A safe word is optional.)